The author of The American Soul and Money and the Meaning of Life, philosopher Jacob Needleman here cuts a clear path through clamorous debates over the existence of God, illuminating an entirely new way of understanding a higher power. The question "What is God?" says Needleman, is inextricably connected to "Who am I?" Needleman begins with his own experience as a promising, Ivy League student of philosophy—atheistic, existential, and unwilling to blindly accept childish religiosity. But an unsettling meeting with the venerated Zen teacher D.T. Suzuki, combined with the sudden need to accept a post teaching the philosophy of religion, forced the young academician to look more closely at the religious ideas he had once thought dead. Within traditional religious texts Needleman discovered a core of esoteric and philosophical ideas, more mature and challenging than anything he had ever associated with Judaism, Christianity, and the religions of the East.

"Needleman has put out a powerful and deeply personal book about his lifelong effort to connect with God using both his head and his heart.... A rare book that manages to be both skeptical and inspiring."—SFChronicle